Background
Abbott grew up in suburban Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan.
(By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything Femm...)
By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything Femmes fatales. Obsessive love. Double crosses. How does a respectable young woman fall into Los Angeles’s hard-boiled underworld? Shadow-dodging through the glamorous world of 1950s Hollywood and its seedy flip side, Megan Abbott’s debut, Die a Little, is a gem of the darkest hue. This ingenious twist on a classic noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney’s office. Lora’s comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past. Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice’s personal history and possibly jealous of Alice’s hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder. Lora's fascination with Alice’s "sins" increases in direct proportion to the escalation of her own relationship with Mike Standish, a charmingly amoral press agent who appears to know more about his old friend Alice than he reveals. The deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice’s secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice’s sinister past—and present. Steeped in atmospheric suspense and voyeuristic appeal, Die a Little shines as a dark star among Hollywood lights.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1476787948/?tag=2022091-20
(From Edgar® -nominated novelist Megan Abbott, who makes “...)
From Edgar® -nominated novelist Megan Abbott, who makes “devotees of Cain and Chandler fall down and beg for mercy” (The Hollywood Reporter), The Song Is You imagines a thrilling conclusion to the still unsolved since 1949 Black Dahlia murder case. On October 7, 1949, dark-haired starlet Jean Spangler kissed her five-year-old daughter good-bye and left for a night shoot at a Hollywood studio. "Wish me luck," she said as she crossed her fingers, winked, and walked away. She was never seen again. The only clues left behind: a purse with a broken strap found in a nearby park, a cryptic note, and rumors about mobster boyfriends and ill-fated romances with movie stars. Drawing on this true-life missing person case, Megan Abbott's The Song Is You tells the story of Gil "Hop" Hopkins, a smooth-talking Hollywood publicist whose career, despite his complicated personal life, is on the rise. It is 1951, two years after Jean Spangler's disappearance, and Hop finds himself unwillingly drawn into the still unsolved mystery by a friend of Jean who blames Hop for concealing details about Jean's whereabouts the night she vanished. Driven by guilt and fear of blackmail, Hop delves into the case himself, feverishly trying to stay one step ahead of an intrepid female reporter also chasing the story. Hop thought he'd seen it all, but what he uncovers both tantalizes and horrifies him as he plunges deeper and deeper into Hollywood's substratum in his attempt to uncover the truth. In the tradition of James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia and Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde, The Song Is You conjures a heady brew of truth and speculation, of fact and pulp fiction, taking the reader on a dark tour of Tinseltown, from movie studios, gala premieres, and posh nightclubs to gangsters, blackmailing B-girls, and the darkest secrets that lie behind Hollywood's luminous façade. At the center of it all is Hop, a man torn between cutthroat ambition and his own best intentions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743291727/?tag=2022091-20
(By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything A yo...)
By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything A young woman hired to keep the books at a down-at-the-heels nightclub is taken under the wing of the infamous Gloria Denton, a mob luminary who reigned during the Golden Era of Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano. Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protégée the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet—as long as she doesn't take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protégée scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416534288/?tag=2022091-20
(Edgar Award–winning author and “reigning crown princess o...)
Edgar Award–winning author and “reigning crown princess of noir” (Booklist) Megan Abbott reignites in Bury Me Deep the hothouse of jealousy, illicit sex, shifting loyalties, and dark perversions of power that marked a true-life case born of Depression-era Phoenix, reimagined here as a timeless portrait of the dark side of desire. By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything In October 1931, a station agent found two large trunks abandoned in Los Angeles’s Southern Pacific Station. What he found inside ignited one of the most scandalous tabloid sensations of the decade. Inspired by this notorious true crime, Edgar®-winning author Megan Abbott’s novel Bury Me Deep is the story of Marion Seeley, a young woman abandoned in Phoenix by her doctor husband. At the medical clinic where she finds a job, Marion becomes fast friends with Louise, a vivacious nurse, and her roommate, Ginny, a tubercular blonde. Before long, the demure Marion is swept up in the exuberant life of the girls, who supplement their scant income by entertaining the town’s most powerful men with wild parties. At one of these events, Marion meets—and falls hard for—the charming Joe Lanigan, a local rogue and politician on the rise, whose ties to all three women bring events to a dangerous collision. A story born of Jazz Age decadence and Depression-era desperation, Bury Me Deep—with its hothouse of jealousy, illicit sex and shifting loyalties—is a timeless portrait of the dark side of desire and the glimmer of redemption.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416599096/?tag=2022091-20
Abbott grew up in suburban Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan.
She received her Doctor of Philosophy in English and American literature from New York University, and has taught at New York University, the State University of New York and the New School University.
Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing, with a female twist. In 2013-2014, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Abbott was influenced by film noir, classic noir fiction, and Jeffrey Eugenides"s novel The Virgin Suicides.
Two of her novels reference notorious crimes.
The Song Is You (2007) is based around the disappearance of Jean Spangler in 1949, and Bury Maine Deep (2009) on the 1931 case of Winnie Ruth Judd, dubbed "the Trunk Murderess". Reception and My Heart is Either Broken (2013).
Appeared in Dangerous Women (anthology). The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled fiction and Film Noir (2002).
A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir (2007).
Abbott has written for major journals and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. She also writes a blog with novelist Sara Gran.
(Edgar Award–winning author and “reigning crown princess o...)
(By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything A yo...)
(From Edgar® -nominated novelist Megan Abbott, who makes “...)
(By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything Femm...)